Note 19 — Chapter L

Respecting Pietro Borsieri, Lodovico di Breme, and Count Porro, mention has already been made. The Count Federico Confalonieri, of an illustrious family of Milan, a man of immense intellect, and the firmest courage, was also the most zealous promoter of popular institutions in Lombardy. The Austrian Government, becoming aware of the aversion entertained by the Count for the foreign yoke which pressed so heavily upon his country, had him seized and handed over to the special commissions, which sat in the years 1822 and 1823. By these he was condemned to the severest of all punishments—imprisonment for life, in the fortress of Spielberg, where, during six months of each weary year, he is compelled by the excess of his sufferings to lie stretched upon a wretched pallet, more dead than alive.